SpikeDust
by BlueLight
Summary: A new Chosen, chosen as we speak. Spike dies (for a while) and a new Slayer comes into her own, fat, fourteen and ferocious: The Trailer-Trash Slayer!


Rating: PG-13  
Blurb: A new Chosen, chosen as we speak. Spike dies (for a while) and a new Slayer comes into her own, fat, fourteen and ferocious  
Spoilers: Post Chosen.  
Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss. Spike belongs to Joss. How I wish I was Joss.  
Distribution: Fine. Just let me know where and link my page and email. Email me for the links. My email is in my profile.   
Acknowledgment: Thanks and hugs to LadyStarlight for her beta help.  
Feedback: Please. If you don't tell me what you like or don't like how can I get better. 

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SpikeDust

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"Chosen as We Speak" 

He could feel his body turning to dust, feel the light, the sun breaking through his skin, burning him from the inside out, making him luminous, effulgent. It didn't hurt...much. His vampire body never hurt much. Like the First Evil said, that was what made vampires such good dollies. Time slowed down and stretched into infinity. He knew Buffy was gone and that he was alone but he didn't mind. He didn't want her hurt. It was a relief when she backed away from his burning flesh and he saw her, out of the corner of his eye, running up the stairs. The amulet burned, bringing light into the darkness of the cave, destroying the Turok-Han as surely as sunlight. And burning him too. As he burned, as his flesh disintegrated, his demon was suddenly gone and he felt free and truly happy for the first time since he was human, long ago. He found himself remembering when he was still alive and a child and used to watch the gardener burn iron pots from the kitchen. When cast irons pots became rough and encrusted they would be taken into the garden, a wood fire built around them, and burned for several hours. When the fire cooled, there they would be, their surfaces no longer black but light gray, lying in the ashes of their own corruption, as good as new. He felt like one of those pots now; the corruption, the husk of evil, burning away, leaving something useful, something that could be used again. He felt the dust of his flesh swirling into a mini- tornado, flowing like sand in an hourglass, concentrating into a smaller and smaller space until he felt almost invisibly small. 

And Safe. 

And Loved. 

And at Rest. 

*****************

L.A. _A while later..._

A homeless girl lurked in a dark alley watching as people came out of a club. Most of them seemed to be young, thin and pretty while she was fat, fourteen and ferocious. Her clothes were dirty. Her hair was matted. A wild child. Living on the street. Eating out of dumpsters. Sleeping in the rain. Not that it rained much in L.A. 

She had been lured here by a newspaper, by the word "Hollywood" and by the dreams she had seen on TV. After she found herself living a dream she went west and finally ended up, not in Hollywood with its hills and houses and dreams, but in downtown LA, with its dirt and bums and urban decay. No one here paid much attention to a raggedy girl in an alley. She was invisible. That was better. She felt...free. No one forced his touch on her now. The dirt helped discourage that. No one would ever again hit her again. Well, that wasn't true. She got hit almost every night. But in this world she got to hit back. She was living like an animal, living in a jungle, but in this jungle she was the top predator and unafraid. She left fear behind in Mississippi, on the floor of her father's trailer as he cowered away from her. As she had often cowered from him.

At least once a day she stopped to think of that scene with a smile. Ever since her mother ran off with that trucker her father had been using her as a punching bag and worse. Actually it wasn't worse. If she had to choose between being beaten until she couldn't stand or being fucked by her father she wouldn't choose the beating. Unfortunately it wasn't one or the other. It was usually both. It was only when he was drunk out of his mind that he would fuck her and in his rage at himself he'd pound on her before he did it. Or after. Or during. And blame her. She'd watched them discuss people like her father on Oprah, daytime TV being her greatest joy after he forced her to drop out of school when she got pregnant. After she told him her period had stopped and after he tried to beat it out of her, he'd come home with some fake ID and drove her to downtown Jackson and had her go to a clinic and tell them she was 18. She'd gotten an abortion and birth control. She wasn't sorry. She had heard on Jerry Springer's show about deformed babies from incest. She'd been 13 but already knew that life was hard enough without being pregnant or having a deformed baby. It seemed a terrible thing to do to a baby. Worse than an abortion. She didn't think life was all that worth living and even by that age a bone deep bitterness had sunk its teeth into her.

She was scrupulous about taking her birth control pills. Even when he drank up the utilities money and they had to swelter in a metal trailer in 100 degree weather with no air conditioning, her father still made sure she had the money to get her birth control pills. She'd always been chunky but once she started taking the pill and spending most of her time in front of the TV she got fat. The fatter she got the worse he treated her, the meaner the things he said to her: "Fat, ugly, stupid bitch!" She would look in the mirror and see he was mostly right. But she didn't think she was stupid. She always made straight A's before he'd made her drop out of school. School had been the one thing she was good at. He hadn't cared. Her mother hadn't cared. She'd give them her report cards to sign, even point out the A's but her mother would only tell her book learning didn't mean anything in life and her father would mutter about her thinking she was better than them. 

That night, that night he'd been drunk. That night he'd come in drunk. When he was ready to fuck her he liked to come home drunk so he never had to look at her sober and acknowledge what he was going to do. He came home late. She hadn't missed him. When he was gone in the evening she was able to watch TV. When he was there he had the TV on the sports channels all the time. Or maybe FoxNews, yelling at the TV, telling O'Reilly to get those damned liberals. But when he was gone she could watch PBS or Friends or CSI. Then he came in, weaving around the trailer. He fell down twice. He puked on the couch. Then he yelled at her, "Come here!" She crept over to him, watching his red swollen face, reeking of vomit, drool trailing out of his mouth. She could tell it was gonna be bad. First it was the names: Pig, Slut, Fat, Blimp, Ugly, Clock-stopping Whore, Mother-fucker, Cock-sucking Bloated Bitch. She turned her head away and willed herself into numbness. He gave her an open handed slap that knocked her to the floor. 

She lay there curled in a ball while he yelled at her, telling her to get up. He undid his shirt and took it off, his belly hanging over his belt, the flesh as pale as death. He told her to get up again and kicked her till she cried. "GET UP!!" he yelled again and again as he kicked. Finally she pushed herself up, getting to her feet in front of him, feeling as weak and helpless as the stray kitten she had found. She'd managed to hide it from him several day. Thenl he noticed it hanging around outside, called it to him, picked it up and wrung its little neck. She had cried more about that than about anything else he had done. She had cried and petted its soft, delicate body, its white fur, looked into its fading blue eyes. It had been so beautiful. When he saw her tears he had slapped her, snatched up the body and threw it into the next yard where three Rottweilers lived. The next day she couldn't find anything left of it but a bit of fur. Sometimes now he would threaten to wring her neck like he did that stinking kitten and she believed that someday he would. 

She got to her feet and stood crying, weak with fatigue and fear and despair. She stood there and he pulled his arm back, balled his fist up and got ready to throw a punch that he said would send her into next Tuesday. Then something happened. She suddenly felt something, something that made her straighten her shoulders and raise her head in surprise. She suddenly felt strong, fearless. He let go with all his drunken force and she barely felt it. He looked surprised then pulled back his arm again. As he threw the next punch she caught his fist and bent it back until she could hear the bones snap. He screamed and dropped to the floor. She smiled at the memory of him lying on the floor crying, holding his arm. She felt so strong. She felt confident. She felt...important. She stood there considering wringing his neck like he had the kitten's but he puked again and she didn't want to touch him even for that. Finally he started cursing her, telling her to get out and never come back. That suddenly seemed like a good idea. She went and packed up her few clothes in a garbage bag, took a loaf of bread and went out the door. The night had been cool and pleasant and the grass sweet smelling. She walked to the highway to Jackson, put out her thumb, and a car stopped. The man in the car reminded her of her father. But she was no longer afraid. When he tried something she broke his arm and held out her thumb again. It had been easy. 

Once she was in Jackson, learning how to live in alleys, eating at a homeless shelter, picking up aluminum cans for cash, she found she liked her life. Being homeless was a step up from where she had been. No one could hurt her now, though a few tried. They learned not to try again. She let her pleasant face and smooth skin become disguised by grime. She replaced a smile that had once been shy and hopeful with an occasional smirk. 

One night she was walking down an alley and a man jumped out at her, grabbed her in an embrace stronger and more repellent than her father's. She was able to push him off her and knock him off his feet. He sprung up surprised and said something strange, "The Slayer! I thought the Slayer was in Sunnydale!" Then they fought. For hours. He'd fought like an animal then finally tried to run away but she h'd followed, over fences, over buildings. Finally she got a good look at him under a streetlight. His face. His teeth. She was so shocked that she stood frozen while he disappeared into the dark. He was a vampire, something out of a movie...but real. And not movie star handsome but ugly with a bumpy face and sharp yellow teeth. 

She was thrilled. 

She went to the library the next day. The librarians circled her again and again. She could tell they wanted this dirty, ugly girl out of their library. She ignored them and read everything she could about vampires. By nightfall she had a wooden stake and was on the prowl. Looking for them. A girl with a mission. She didn't find one that night. Or the next. Or the next. But the fourth night she followed a man and women across the park, watched as they paused and the man took the woman in his arms and kissed her neck. Then the woman started to cry and pull away. The man raised his head and she could see blood on his sharp teeth, on his lips, trailing down his chin. She ran up, pulled him away from the woman and forced the stake into his chest. It was ...like an instinct. Like she knew just how to do it. She could still feel how the stake went through his shirt, then his skin, then the scrape of the wood against his ribs, then down to his heart then... he exploded into dust. She was so startled that she fell back onto the grass and sat there breathless and exhilarated. She helped the woman, who hadn't seen what happened, to the emergency room and before they took her away the woman turned to her, her eyes glowing in gratitude, and hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. 

No one had ever hugged and kissed her, not if you didn't count her father's drunken embrace and she didn't, not her mother, not anyone. She used to watch as other parents brought their kids to school, watch jealously as they hugged and kissed them goodbye. Her parents never hugged her. She would try to hug her mother, but the woman would only push her off and tell to wash the floor or hang the clothes or do the dishes. But this woman, this stranger hugged her and looked at her with, well, almost love. Jenni knew it wasn't love, it was gratitude, but she liked it. She liked it a lot. 

After that there was no stopping her. She decided that she must be, well, chosen, to rescue people from vampires. And so she did. Another vampire, another night, right before it died, said, "I thought the Slayer died with Sunnydale!"

Those names again. Slayer. And Sunnydale. She knew SHE was a Slayer. But Sunnydale? Maybe there was someone there who could tell her what she was and what she was meant to do. Back to the library. It was in California. It had been easy to find because of all the news reports when most of it had been swallowed by a sinkhole. That must have been what the vampire meant about the Slayer dying with Sunnydale. 

She left the library and put out her thumb again, heading west. Within a week, a week that taught a half a dozen men that a helpless looking girl on the road might not be an easy target, she was standing beside an enormous hole. She went down the steep sides and found nothing but wrecked houses and dirt and stone. No one to answer her questions. No other Slayer. No sister Slayer, no someone who would understand, who would accept her, embrace her, care for her, care about her. She sat in the dirt and cried. All night. 

The next day she climbed out the hole and started west till she came to the ocean. And swam in it. Caught fish with her hands and cooked them over a driftwood fire she started by rubbing two dry sticks together (she'd seen it on TV). The wind from the sea made her wish she was a ship, sailing away. The beach was nice. There were no vampires on her beach and few people, probably because the shore was rocky and the ocean broken into morphing white lace and bouncing fringe. It was perfect for her. The ocean was no match for her new strength. The beach no trouble to her new toughness. One day a newspaper blew across the rocks and she snatched it out of the air to use as kindling for her fire. It was a back page of the Los Angeles Times and near the bottom was a tiny article about the discovery of the body of an unidentified woman. A woman with neck injuries. She looked at the article a long time. It was only an inch of column space. No indication it was unusual or that anyone much cared. But she cared. She felt responsible. She felt guilty. She wasn't doing her job. Her mission. She has been playing in clear water like a child in the tub. She looked at the newspaper and the message she got was "Here lie vampires." So she left her beach and headed to LA. And there were vampires.

*****************

First Hollywood. The hills. The sign. Then onto LA. The first night she wandered around downtown, looking at everything. In a lot of ways it was the same as Jackson, except for the palm trees and it being newer and richer. A few blocks east of downtown the city started to turn worn and raggedly with lots of homeless people. She fit in there. No one noticed her. She looked up as she wandered through the lighted cliffs of the city. There were some beautiful buildings. They looked like something out movies but mostly LA was concrete, asphalt, brick, signs, windows, run down shops, it all looked the same to her. Generic. But she found beauty in it, in how some mornings the pollution made the sky a glow golden and how cars seemed to speed along rivers of asphalt like steel canoes. 

LA was a city of lights. There were so many streetlights that some places were like day all the time. In one of her explorations she even found a brightly-lit amusement park on a pier that went way out into the ocean. Sometimes she'd hitchhike down to the beach near it and watch the lights and listen to the happy sounds of people playing. It almost made her feel happy herself. She'd never been to an amusement park. When she tried to get in the gate they wouldn't let her. She was so dirty. For the next few days before she dusted a vampire she made sure to get any cash they had first. The vampires seemed more outraged by the robberies than by their impending deaths. When she had a hundred dollars she bought some shorts and a top from the thrift store then rented a cheap room for the afternoon and washed and put on her new clothes. She put out her thumb and went back to the pier. They let her in this time. She walked around till it closed, watching the people. She didn't have the money to ride but she did buy a hot dog. It was okay. She fantasized about coming back with a real family, people who loved her, and riding all the rides with them. Or maybe coming back with a guy. She watched boys her age all the time. From a distance. Once or twice she had tried to talk to them and they laughed at her or twisted their faces and walked away. She stopped trying to talk to them. But she still looked. 

Sometimes it seemed to her that everyone in LA had a car except her and the vampires. They stalked people coming out of clubs, out of plays, out of concerts, out restaurants, out of bars, waylaying their victims as they headed through the dark bound for their cars. They would follow the people and she would follow them. A stalker stalking the stalkers. 

It was fun. She would almost skip along, the lights and the music from the passing cars would make her feel she was at a party. She had never been to a party but she'd watched some through the windows of houses. People dancing. Eating. Drinking. Laughing. Sometimes leaping into a pool with all their clothes on. It looked romantic to her. And as out of reach as the stars. 

She lived on the edge of people's lives, people whose lives she saved, often without them even knowing. Killed their would-be killers. The vampire about to take a child in the dark. The vampire about to spring on the pretty couple necking in their car. The vampire about to kill the old man who had come out of the hospital after midnight, hoping his wife would survive till the next day, not knowing how close he came to not surviving himself. And each one she saved, pulled from that bloody embrace, each one she loved. For each one she made a place in her heart, even though they never knew. They were hers. Hers to hold and remember. She knew she was responsible for every bit of happiness they would ever have for the rest of their lives even if they didn't know. Just thinking of them made her glow inside, made her feel...not alone.

She leaned against the wall and watched from across the street as a couple came out of a bar, his arm over her shoulder, hers around his waist, both of them leaning together. For a moment she felt sick with jealousy. For a moment she felt desire and hatred for what she had never had and would never have but she pushed the feeling down, down, down, stomped it out like a dangerous fire. They stopped in the middle of the street to kiss while the cars rushed by on either side of them. After a moment they pulled apart smiling then turned and waited for a break in the traffic and then sprinted across the rest of the street. They passed her laughing. She didn't think they saw her but the guy suddenly stopped and pulled the girl back with him, back to where she stood leaning up against the building. He pulled out a fifty and pushed it into her hand, telling her to take care. They all smiled at each other for a moment then the couple turned, a little drunkenly, happily high, exhilarated by their good deed, and went back down the alley. It was a long, wide alley lined with two story apartments, their back walls flush against the asphalt. There were recessed doors, second-story balconies, gates into side yards, and a line of parked cars narrowing it, funneling the couple into the shadows and what might be hidden in the shadows. Not being a street there were no streetlights, just the glow from the lights in houses shining off the cars. There was a puddle of light here and there but mostly it was darkness, gray shadows and black. The alley was a bad one. She'd killed dozens of vampires in that alley. Three in some kind of uniform. It was one of their favorite hunting grounds. And one of her favorite hunting grounds as well. 

She let the couple get ahead of her then started after them, keeping to the shadows, watching as they stopped to kiss again, to murmur to each other in the dark, the girl giggling a little. Then she saw a little movement off to the side and two dark silhouettes appeared behind the couple. She smiled a little and moved her extra stake into her front pocket as she stealthily closed the distance between them. Tigers of the night. That's how she thought of vampires. Man-eating tigers. And she a bigger tiger. Or the great hunter. She saw a movie on TV like that once. Set in India. She wished she could have a TV again. 

She glided closer.

Suddenly the vampires leapt on the couple, pulling them apart, one holding the guy from behind as he lowered his head to the guy's neck. The other vampire held the shrieking girl by one wrist and slowly pulled her in like he was pulling in a fish... till Jenni broke first his grip then his arm. As he reeled back from her she followed and drove in a stake that made him go "pooff." She turned to the other vampire who still had his teeth in the struggling guy. She grabbed the back of his head and hair and pull back until the vampire was forced to open his mouth and his fangs came out of the victim's neck. Then she picked him up and threw him up against the side a building leaving man sized mark on the stucco wall. They battled around for while, mostly with her toying with him, until she "pooffed" him too. She turned to the couple and saw them running down the alley, almost to the next lighted street, the lights from cars streaking in front of them, the girl supporting the guy. 

She almost called out, "Wait! Wait for me!" But they were gone. She wanted....she wanted their gratitude. She wanted them to know it was her. She wanted them to see her and smile with appreciation. She wanted them to talk to her for a minute. She wanted not to be alone, just for a little. It wasn't hard for her to live on the street but the loneliness was starting to hurt like the worst kind of hunger, like the week there was no money for food and she'd had to starve till her father got paid. The loneliness was worse. She just wanted SOMEONE to talk to. Someone. Someone to know she was alive. Someone. Anyone. 

She sighed and leaned back against a wall and watched till the couple turned the corner to safety. She wondered if they even saw her, as dark as it was in this spot. They might not have even known what was happening, that someone was helping them. She sighed again, pushed herself off the wall and started back the way she'd come. She went about two steps and felt something under her foot. She looked down and saw a faint star-like shine. She reached for it and found something half covered in dust from the last vampire. It seemed to be a big pendant on a chain. She carried it up the alley and into the illumination from a restaurant's windows and, holding it up to the light, saw what looked like a huge diamond in an ornate setting. She knew it was certainly fake but it was pretty. She liked it. She held it up again, admiring how it seemed to glow, looked closer and saw...something. Closer and she could make out the figure of a man. Moving. Inside the jewel. 

*****************

Well, what did you think?

Jenni is what LadyStarlight called an unexpected protagonist. 

TBC if you like...


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